Thursday, January 31, 2008

After seeing that Illinois shot 7-19 (.368) on free throws in their loss to Michigan State last night, and remembering the wonderful 11-21 Minnesota put up against Indiana, I was wondering if the Big Ten just sucks at free throws or what, so I took a look at all six of the BCS conferences free throw percentages, and noticed something interesting.

Free throw percentage almost perfectly correlates to conference RPI. All you'd have to do is flip flop the Big 12 and the Big East, and you'd have it exactly. How very interesting.

Conference

FT %

RPI Rank

ACC

70.6%

1

PAC 10

70.4%

2

BIG 12

68.1%

4

BIG EAST

67.8%

3

SEC

67.8%

5

BIG TEN

67.3%

6

So free throws are a pretty damn good indicator of success, unless you're Memphis in which case you can shoot 58.7% and still be the Jessica Alba of the NCAA.

7 comments:

Jimmy
said...

I'm not a "baseball guy," I haven't read Moneyball and typically don't chime in on all the baseball chatter on DWG. I think I was a lifetime .250 hitter in litttle league and don't profess to know alot about baseball, but considering the importance of pitching in baseball - particularly in the playoffs - don't you think the money spent on Morneau would have been better spent on Johan? Morneau is great and all, but I would have rather parted ways with him and used that money (and spend a little more) to lock up Johan - a once in a generation player. The Twins would be competitors for years with a Johan/Liriano one-two punch - particularly in the playoffs. Am I completely off my rocker or does that make sense?

I would much rather have held onto Johan than Morneau. IF Liriano comes back strong, the two of them would have had the Twins in contention every year.

There are theories how Johan would only impact the team once every five days (false) or how pitchers are more prone to breaking down without warning (maybe true), but they should have found a way to sign Johan, especially once it became clear they weren't going to get dick for him.

We will see how Johan looks this year. he showed some signs that he was slipping a little last year, especially at the end of the year. could be that he is fine or it could be there is something wrong that the Twins staff saw and didn't want to commit to 5-6 years at that price tag. hey, i'm just trying to be positive here.

Snacks, I agree with everything you just wrote about Johan, however, your last line wants to make me throw up. You don't work for the Twins PR staff, it's not your responsibility to be positive about a terrible trade.

This is the problem with Minnesota sports fans, everybody is perfectly content with being flyover country, or at least content justifying why we are. It's OK to hold teams accountable for bad trades, keeping bad coaches/GM's, or other idiotic decisions they make. Apathy should not be the norm.

This state needs real fans, people who actually hold teams accountable, not justify every bad decision they make. It needs more accountability, more cynicism, and a lot less of Sid Hartman, Mike Max, WCCO, Dick Bremer, and Bert Blyleven.

Christ, you've been married less than two weeks and you've already gone soft.

the fact remains you can't judge whether or not this is a good or a bad trade right now - all you can do is hope that it turns out well. so the prospects don't look all that great to you (or most commentators). how the hell do you know who is going to pan out and who isn't? There is absolutely no reason that Gomez couldn't become twice the player Ellsbury does. He could also be a flop and Ellsbury could become a perennial all-star. We just don't know and it is too early to judge. If we had gotten Brien Taylor circa 1989 in this trade you would have loved it, but look how that would have turned out. The only thing we know is that the trade hurts the Twins in the short term, and that would have been true no matter which team they traded with or what prospects they got. I never said it was a good trade or a bad trade and I wasn't defending anyone - I just said "we'll see". there is nothing wrong with hoping for the best for your team, and only a cynical a-hole like yourself would say otherwise.